Tube Amps in 2026: Rolling Glass, Blowing Fuses, and Why Valves Still Reign Victorious

I got my Burlington records. Those guys are awesome. Those guys let me know when something really strange comes in. That's how I am with Burlington Coat Factory, my favorite store. And they are fantastic. Welcome. You're dialed into the E-Coustics Podcast. Connecting you to the news makers and innovators that are changing the way the world experiences the art of music and movies. This episode of the E-Coustics Podcast is brought to you by SVS. Makers of high-performance speakers, subwoofers, cables, wireless audio gear and more. SVS brings thrilling and immersive audio experiences to more people than ever with expert support, white glove service and sound that far exceeds the price. Learn more at svsound.com Now on with the show. Welcome to this episode of the E-Coustics Podcast. I am your host and producer, Mitch Anderson. On this episode we have Eric Pie at AudioLoveYYC. Hey, Eric. Hey, how's it going? Good to be back. Good. That was just so happy to have you back. Jeremy at Budget Audio Filer. What up? Hello, all. Hello. This episode we are going to be talking in great detail about something the three of us collectively don't know all that much about. And I'm really looking forward to this. And I'm saying not knowing much about in the physics sense and the science behind and the mythical qualities and properties of the valve, the vacuum tube. It's one that it's a conversation that the three of us have wanted to have for a little bit because we all do have quite a bit of experience with vacuum tubes. Even though none of us are tax, one of us in the group has built their own amplifier. And so there's we do have some like danger zone type areas that we can visit into. But the the topic of vacuum tubes and valves. I think is one that is really exciting to have because I use them every single day. And leading up to this episode that is something I reflected on is that vacuum tubes have been a walking part of my journey as an entrepreneur as a musician, producer, all the things. I have vacuum tubes on in my house pretty much 24/7. Even down to the Fisher FM tuner upstairs connected to the SVS system. So that's we're going to dive into all that kind of stuff. And Eric, I think kicking it off your way with your take to start us off on some valve talk. What you got going on. Sure. Well, yeah, I like having my valve or tube amp hooked up in the winter time. Absolutely. You know, there's the W word that people use to talk about the tube sound. But I like the fact that it actually doubles as a heater here in Calgary. There's some some pretty good warmth that emanates out of it. Oh, I said the word. There's some heat that comes from. We made it in two minutes. Always good in a in a cold, shag carpeted room. So yeah, I have only one tube amp and that is the Dynaco ST 77 or 70. It has been modded. So rather than using EL34 tubes, it's using either 6550s or KT 88s. So pretty good output from that now. I think higher than the 35 watts per channel rating. But the reason that I had it modded is the fact that when I bought it, I knew absolutely nothing about two bamps other than the fact that I really wanted one and I wanted to hear one. Sure. So it arrived. I unpacked it. I put the tubes in. And then I saw the bias kind of control on the top of the Dynaco. And I kind of touched it and they were they weren't loose, but they were kind of like movable. I was like, oh, that's probably not right. And so I just turned them until they wouldn't turn anymore. Any van Halen style. Yeah, I turned it up to 11. And then I turned it on and almost as soon as I turned it on, the rectifier blue. And I then couldn't use it. And so I took it into one shelf and they looked at it and they were like, yeah, whoever sent this to you didn't know what they were doing. It's not been set up properly. You should send it back. The bias is all wrong. I was like, no, this is going to be flexible. So I took it to another tech and he kind of took a look at him. It's like, yeah, the bias is off. And then he kind of went through it and he did a whole bunch of mods on it for me. One was shifting it from EL34s to K2, then 6550s. And he decided that so Calgary's power is what he called spiky. And so he decided that I would be better off without a tube rectifier and then he put in a solid state rectifier for stability. And possibly for safety against an idiot like me. And then set it up and showed me how to check and set the bias and send me on my way. And it's been rock solid ever since. It's not even the same amp you bought though. I mean, which is cool. Really cool. It's got to be not, I'm not saying 100% only different, but I mean, you're rocking it very different amplifiers than what you originally purchased. Yeah. And I wish I, I wish I had heard it with the original tubes and the original. All of it. I all I read was and saw some. And that was basically my experience of the original setup. So what's the, what's your, I think this is a great moment for a quick PSA. Maybe look at some instructions, read up a little bit about tubes. Don't touch it if you don't know what it is, especially if it's a vintage one because a lot of the, yes, a lot of the new amplifiers they have auto bias and all that kind of stuff. You know, you, you flick a switch of what kind of tube you've put in it and it auto sets itself. I'm thinking of, so there's a very popular modern chifi tube player called a will sent in. I don't know if you guys have heard of them. I've read about them on a few kind of forums and stuff and people just go gaga over them there and integrated amp with tube in the pre and power stage. And so I'm curious to hear one of those at some point, but I mean, if you buy one of those where you've got auto biasing, then that's great. But if you, yeah, vintage tube amp, you really should figure out not necessarily understanding what bias is, but understand that it's a thing and that it should be set properly. And it can hurt you. You shouldn't piss about with it. No, I got I got railed by a tube amp, a trainer, some Canadian energy. It was a 1972 trainer, YSR1 and just a smoking guitar bass amp and archival on the Jor. He was like, man, don't, don't play this until you get it looked at and gone over by the tech. And listen, and it had an open ground and it was like it was a 50 watt. I think it was rolling E L 34s. Yeah, but it was just 50 watt straight to the mouth like it was awful. Those the tube amp stuff. Yeah, you can blow your stuff up. You can hurt yourself. And if you're buying vintage, Jeremy, this we're going to kick it to you. But if you're buying vintage, have that stuff looked at by a tech. Even if they say it's all good when you buy it and everything like that, have it looked over by a tech before you plug it into your stuff. Jeremy, what's up? Hello. So let's talk to you. So I think I think we've all seen Macintosh tubes. We've all seen the vintage ones and we've all seen the new ones. So so there there's certainly one of the companies that have really held tight to these tubes where other ones have kind of faded away and some are tiptoeing back in. But Macintosh really never left. Right. So so that always got my interest in it saying, you know, if Macintosh has these things around still, there has to be something to it. So how do I get into it? And once again, I knew nothing about it. Having solid state the entire time I started looking at what are the ones out there. The Fisher 400 came out. Came up a lot. So so that is a receiver. It's an EO I think EO 34 based. Actually, no, that's this 7868, I think. But in any case, you will know all of these two tube numbers. They're they're easy to Google to look up and that will kind of say we'll put links in the description to to the amp the air just mentioned in like a two reference guide. We'll put links in all this stuff. Yeah. And and and basically output tubes are the wattage. So you'll hear us talk about input tubes or output tubes. The output is ultimately the wattage. And and they all have codes. So in poking around, the dynacos came up a lot, and then the receivers came up a lot. Now I'm in New York state, so I'm extremely lucky with the amount of equipment, especially tube. So pilot was out of New York, Stromberg, Carlson was out of New York, early Moran's was out of New York, McIntosh obviously was out of New York. So we have all these tube amp or tube receivers kind of on the Facebook marketplace lurking around in the background. And I will reiterate when you're buying something like this, please have somebody take a look at it. I have plugged them in. Normally when I get one, I will, I actually found a tube tester as well. This was a used yes, those can be picked up use they they have to be calibrated. So I if you find somebody who is attacked, I would I normally ask if they have an extra tube tester around and normally they collect tube testers for some reason. So they're like, yeah, I've got to carry around give it to you for like 50 bucks. And then I'm like, okay, great. So I will test the tubes to make sure that everything is viable within there. And then there's other ways to safely do it with like a very act, which will slowly increase the voltage. So so at least you can control it. There's also a dim bulb, which will test for a short. So these are all things that you can look for the very act. You can find those anywhere they make them new. The dim bulb tester, that's a great way not to get shocked. So you can make those with with a light bulb and some things that you can find and you can look that up on YouTube. And so so you can have some rudimentary stuff to kind of give it a trial run. But ultimately you're talking about capacitors that are 50 years old. So although sometimes I am drawn after my initial test to hear it before modding it or before repairing it or having is sorted. So I have done that for for an ST 70 after going through the rudimentary stuff. It sounded great. I absolutely love to hear it exactly with the original tubes, with the original capacitors because it's only original ones. And if it's in good shape and it's been stored correctly and it's been well maintained and taken care of, then really like if your environment and your humidity and everything is right and the craftsmanship was like good up front, then it's not necessarily true that you're going to have leaky capacitors in the power supply of a 60 year old amplifier. Like that. So but a lot of times that stuff does have to be changed out. But like you said, you get those really groovy ones that are time capsules that just work right out of the box. That rips. And I'm also very, very lucky to have an amp tech. Yeah. Shout out to Don here because we can bring something to Don and Don's like, yeah, whoever had this wire, this wrong. Let me just swap this out. Let me swap this out and we go home with a working cap. I've also had him look at something which he's like, well, somewhere along the line here, somebody did this wrong. That's the line right there. Somewhere along the line. And some of these were kits. So you don't know whether or not an engineer built them or I built them on my first amp. So my first thing that I built is going to be floating around for a while. So those are the things that as of now, I don't even know how many amps, two bands I have as of now. But I will say in my main system, there will always be a a a a two amp output. And as of now, I have an ST70 also built up exactly. This was a tubes for high-fight kit and it was built up specifically for the KT 88. So it has larger transformers. It's wired a little bit differently. But it's built exactly to kind of have a hot-rotted version of the ST70. And then I have a set of Mark Mark three monos, which were the tube tech because Don, every once in a while, he builds himself like the hot-rotted set and then he gets part with them. So that's another one. So you can get a set of those things. I have a set of those as well. And I will always have tubes because I truly enjoy the sound. Now the Mark three is that mono block ST70 basically? Yeah. It's the larger ST70. So it has the beefed up transformers. It runs the 6550s in the KT 80s right off the mat. So yeah, so finally my ST70 does not have upgraded transformers. So I have to under-bias it so that I don't overwhelm the transformers and turn it into a ballistic missile of heat. Yep. So the biasing is just setting the voltage of the tubes. Yeah. There's kind of a sweet spot between under-powering it and over-powering it and there's a sweet spot and sound. But to Eric's point you can set that, you can put your little probes in there and then you can bias to exactly what it should be. And there's really neat things that happen in a bias to the tonal characteristics. Like there is that sweet spot for that is a sweet spot also meaning like full fidelity where you're getting the largest range of spectrum with the most dynamic range before natural tube compression. And when you're under-biasing then you're starving the amplifier of voltage and so you can get which in like the music world can be a really attractive quality for like guitar sounds and stuff like that is a starved tube kind of sputtery and mean and muddy kind of feeling. But then yeah, and then over-biasing you'll just blow your stuff up. That sweet spot is a really cool thing and a really, really good tech can nail that sweet spot. But it's kind of difficult to find it when you're experimenting with your own stuff and sometimes the bias potentiometer just isn't that great. So there's a ton of factors that go into like does this tube amp sound good? And one of those factors for sure would be along the same lines with the bias would be the valve, the tube. And if something if a for example you buy this amp, new out of box or it's a vintage one that is just working but it has been biased out of tolerance with or the tube is out of tolerance with the bias or the bias is just too wide of a spectrum then you're going to run into issues where you're burning through tubes really fast or you're just amp is sounding strange for some reason. And a lot of that stuff is all paired together with what like are your tubes matched or is your 12-AX7 driver, is that matched up correctly with the other 12-AX7 driver. And so they're operating cohesively with one another instead of out of phase with one another. And so it does open up the book of Tinkerers Delight that is valves for sure and it is really fun. Like I love tubes because I think they are so fun. I love how the stamps look on the new old stock ones that like tongue saw how it has kind of that frosted white. Oh, it like there's just so much artistry inside everything they look like a science project because they are a science project. And they look like something you shouldn't be able to touch. Like it reminds me of stuff that I would have gotten trouble like going to an antique car show. My grandpa always said you got to keep your hands in your pockets, came to your pockets. Well now I'm 37 and I don't have to do that anymore with tubes. And so that's like I do think that there is a really important aspect for vacuum tubes for me that's outside of sound and it's that they bring me a lot of joy to utilize. And so because I like using them I use my equipment more and I listen to more music and I'm using my stuff for kind of like the reason it was made and I really dig that and I don't have that same relationship with like class D amplification. There's just nothing sexy about it to me. Sure it might sound great but it's not sexy. And that's just how I feel I guess. But I leave like I leave my tubes on specifically the one I'm the main unit I'm talking about is the linear tube audio MZ3 is my main production workhorse for like everything. And unless I leave the house for like vacation I leave the amp on 24/7. I don't know why it's the same with my RME equipment. I leave it on 24/7 because I've had issues before where one flip of a power supply like on off that's when your issues happen. I don't know if that's recommended to leave your stuff on that long but it works for me. Do you guys do any of that stuff by the way? Do you leave yours on for extended periods of time or you on and off pretty much when you're done with the session? For me it's on and off. If I'm not putting a load through the system musically, then I normally turn it off. - I'm off as well. Turned on maybe 10 minutes before I'm gonna listen to tunes, let it warm up a little bit, and then there you go. - Sure, the company making people sound extraordinary for nearly a century. Sure provided the MV7 podcast microphone and SRH440A, professional studio headphones used in this episode. Each are available now at sure.com, spelled SHUR.com. - I'm just noticing now, since me and Michigan and Jeremy, you and New York and Eric, you up in Canada, do you think it has anything to do that we're all in winter season right now that we're drawn more to backing tunes? I wonder what the divide line is on that. - We're innately searching, always searching for heat. - Yeah, they do heat up quite a bit. And yeah, they do. - And there are also something you'll wanna be very cognizant around with children. And my kids know all about 'em, but when other kids come home from home, they'll go near it there. - Yeah, we were just talking, no joke. We were just talking about this with my, so I have a nine year old and a six year old. And we were talking about my equipment just like two days ago and both of them have experiences with tubes and the amplifier blowing up. My youngest and I, it was a Eric, you mentioned a rectifier tube earlier, and that's the voltage change spot from the wall to the amplifier. And is it the voltage change spot, or is that the right way to define a rectifier tube is where the voltage gets flipped? - Probably the easiest way to say it. - Yeah, okay, in a nutshell, yeah, in a poor nutshell way. AI probably would have done it a lot better. But that tube, I don't know what the issue was, but about a being about a boom, all of a sudden, there's fire out the bottom of the tube socket. And so we got rid of that bad boy. And then the other one was with the guitar amp. And my oldest was turning the switch on from the back, taking it out of standby. And all this, I think that maybe like the speaker cable got disconnected or something from the speaker. At some point got jostled. And so he flipped it off a standby and there was nowhere for the signal to go because there was no speaker to take the load and so those tubes just turned into the most gorgeous violet, blue, deep, green and red. But it was smoked. And so yeah, if you are using tubes, just like any amplifier, solid state can be a little bit more. What's the word? Resilient, I guess, forgiving, yeah. But if you have a tube amp, and especially if it's too rectified, too damp and you don't have that thing plugged into a speaker or hooked up to a load and you flipped it on, speaking from experience, it just blows right up. It's like the most expensive, but beautiful display of color for like 15 seconds. It's not worth it though. I'm not supposed to be in the butt. But yeah, the dangers there are real, I think. Because I mean, Jeremy, have you had any screw ups with it? I mean, Eric's blown stuff up. I've had fire in my house because of tubes. - I blown rectifier tubes. I think anyone with a tube rectifier has blown one. They go that's-- - Five, why three? - Yeah, those are probably the weaker side of the entire system. And I think that's the intention to some degree. - If you want to know what a rectifier tube sounds like, then listen to some Neil Young electric guitar lead stuff off of those earlier recordings. His guitar tone is known to really showcase what's called rectifier SAG. And it's when he's hitting his guitar like so hard that the voltage is actually pumping. And you can hear the compression of it. It's a really attractive quality in music. But that's all because of the rectifier tube, which I think is cool. - Yeah, yeah, there's an entire science to the actual tube amp, the guitar tube amp versus the audio tube amp. Yeah, so those are two, I mean, similar but different beats. And with different strong points, different weak points, when you asked me, have I, when I did build up the dad amp, I followed the instructions, I followed him again, but I didn't follow him close enough. And I was going through the testing protocols and one of the testing protocols is to fire it up without the tubes in it. And we did the dim bulb partially failed it. So I kept going, which is a bad idea. If you fail the dim bulb, you fail the dim bulb. Just stop. - It was a close enough. - And I'm like, I think it's working. I was wrong and I should have some capacitors. Now that wasn't a big deal. That was just, that was probably about five bucks and parts and about an hour worth of work. And that got it back together. Now when we get into the Antiguaireless Association and their amp building class that I attended, not only did they have that class, but afterwards, you could bring back the amp when it was done. And they would put it through all of the tests with the oscilloscopes. They had all of the testing equipment and we went step by step to absolutely tune in the amp once it was done. And I believe nobody to have all of these devices that I got to use or maybe somebody who's been in the industry repairing quite a bit, but it was really neat to go through all of the testing protocols and then to actually see where the clipping is and to see. And I used OMS law on paper to tune it in. And I'm like, okay, this is going back to physics 30 years ago. And I'm actually using some of this stuff. So that was interesting, but they are pretty simple. Like they are not complex items. So if you find one that's in decent cosmetic condition, you could bring it up to tip top shape easily. - And so what that class, how long was that? Since you were with an instructor and stuff, was it a whole, was it like a two day crash course or how did the whole thing go? - Yes. So the Antique Wireless Association is a museum in Bloomfield, New York, which is just south of Rochester. So if you're ever in Rochester, New York, they have a museum of literally everything from Morris code all the way up to modern equipment, to a full on radio station, which they acquired and reinstalled in the building. - All the correct. - So it is, and almost everything is functional. And the stuff that's not functional, they are working to get it functional. - We'll put a link to this in the description too. I gotta check it out afterward. - Yeah, it is an absolutely fascinating. So they ran something called an AMP Building Boot Camp. So they staffed it with basically engineers, like full on audio engineers. These were people that have done that their whole life. They were the instructors. It was over the course of a weekend. I think it was a three day course, like I think Friday through Sunday. And it was, you find an AMP kit and it could be one of the ones from overseas. I opted to go with one from tubes for high-fi, just 'cause if I was gonna build one, I might as well go for the gusto. - Build the one you want. - Yep, yep. - So I'm like, I'm gonna go with this one and I'm gonna go with the larger mod and I'm gonna go with, I'm just gonna do it 'cause I have supervision. I feel like I can safely do this. - Supervision or supervision? - Well, I do not have supervision. You can tell by my classes. So lame joke. - I was supervised as in my, the first day was theory. We watched the video on soldering. - Oh, bare-borne starting. Sweet. Okay, cool, cool, cool. - Yeah, so really just understanding what we're doing and mathematically what we're doing and then Saturday and Sunday were build days. I will say building an amp for eight hours, a kind of hunched over learning for two days, it was a lot, but the entire weekend was an absolutely beautiful experience. So that part is life-changingly cool and it's in wine region, so it's just a cool place to go. - Yeah. - So I almost got it completely done. It was almost like, we think we can do it, we think we can do it. I think I started to rush and that's where I took it home. I finished the last part. I started the testing procedure and that's where the testing failed. So then they said, you can bring it back any one of these weekends following it. We'll have staff that can help you and we were able to get it going. And then we went through the full testing protocol with all of the instruments. - You know you did wrong? - Yes, yes. Basically one of the lines that connect the drive board, which is that central board that then connects out through the actual chassis. So the chassis connects to all of the tubes. It connects to the transformers. That was wired at a 50/50 chance and I took the wrong one because looking at that. So pictures help a lot. Color coding helps a lot. Really double checking your work and then really abiding by that testing protocol. But everyone who I met there, they were absolutely awesome. The instructor told stories about, we were asking him questions like, hey, what's the best upgrade you can do? And he's like probably a glass of wine. So, he had other stories, but I won't get into those. But we did get a full tour and we were able to see literally musical instruments and every imaginable tube you can ever imagine. They have ones, they have ones that they're the size of your torso. - Oh yeah, for radio stations. - Yeah, and then they have functioning, Art.go table systems. So just such a very, very cool place. And I was able to build that and then get a comfort level, get a comfort level on using the multimeter, get a comfort level on how it goes from AC power to DC power, how to test for everything. And now I have left a very functional amp. So it's been a few years and it's still going strong. And I have since kind of upgraded the tubes on it to make it even better. - Yeah, I was gonna ask about that with your guys' experience with the tube rolling. - Yeah, because I could talk about it for a long time and the headphones and portables editor, Will Jennings for E.Coustics. He's been, him and I've had a lot of conversations about tubes over the years. And he sent me a box of new old stock GE 5 stars, which are really cool. Because I have an issues with my, one of my main microphone preamp. It's an all vacuum tube mic pre. And we just got chatting about it. He's like, well, let me just, let me look through what I got. Let me send you some things. Whole brother. Like it had changed in those tubes out into the GE's and they had, I think it had the only, both the left channel and the right channel, or two channel mic pre, whatever. But they had new old stock Phillips in one of the sections. And those were really pretty neat in all the other tubes over JJ's. But I don't know when they had been replaced before, but when I put the set of stuff in that Will sent over, it was a drastic difference in the fidelity. And I've done that with my microphones going from 12 A X seven to 12 A T sevens or 12 A U sevens, new JJ's old tongue souls. And I tend to normally land on the new old stock, sonically, and especially in two in high five systems, like my voice of the music is my main high five tube amp from the 50s. It's stereo with a separate preamp section. But I love that stuff rolling them out. But what about you guys? Are you more leaning new? Do you have or do you go older style on type on your type of stuff? I don't have a lot of experience with different kinds of tubes. I basically used two different tube sets in my dinoco. When I had it modded, the tech who did the work gifted me a pair of new old stock spetlana 6550s, the winged seas. Oh, really cool. And they are fantastic tubes. I mean, I didn't have anything to compare them to, but I was super happy with them for the other really nice three years. And then earlier this year, I was led to understand that you can switch KT 88s for 6550s with basically no change to the machine, maybe a slight change to the sound. And so I got a pair of the rate tubes, KT 88 selects, is it selects or reserves? I can never remember, reserves, reserves. And I put them in and they sound better. They're both great combinations, but yeah, those KT 88s are fantastic. And I think a lot of that is probably the rate tubes brand, because I've heard other people who've had other rate tubes, tube sets in their amps, and all of them are blown away by how good they are. Well, yeah, I mean, we're going to be talking about those for sure, because I've got like I got my two boxes right here. So there you go. Let's go to the 6SN7 reserve box, and then the 12AT7 selects is what's in the linear tube audio right now. And that was, and I've swapped out, I think it still happened in the box. Oh yeah, what did I swap those out for? The 6SN7 reserves from rate tubes replaced their RCA 12SX7s, 12SX7. So is what the 6SN7s replaced and going from them. I know that I, and I clarified that I leave my stuff on 24/7 for a reason. And so because those going from 24/7 new old stock RCA is over to 24/7 usage of brand new 6SN7s that had been gone over with a fine tooth comb to make sure they were matched to the most possible darn near molecular level. Right, yeah, I don't understand how you, how a company or a person could be more like choosy with what they are selling, than what the rate tubes process is. It's pretty, it feels like it's pretty intense, but it paid off because when I put those things in, I know a lot of this is because I'm sure that the tubes that I had been using were just like dying down because they've had been used so much. But man, did I just get the fit, I just got the fidelity back. The stereo imaging was the, was the very easiest first tell was the whole spectrum was wider. And that is not the other W word. But the, the wind of the stereo image was present immediately. And the first time I heard them was through my, the headphones. And so it was stark what that change did. Where it kind of made me blink in my eyes light up some, you know, because it was, it was beautiful. It's exactly what the amp should have sounded like. And it didn't change anything that I knew about the amp. It didn't change any of the qualities of the music that I knew was going through it. But what it did do was provide a bigger wider stereo image. And I don't know if it's my ears tricking me because they want to think this or if it's real. But I do believe that there's a slight difference in the dynamic range before saturation. The tube itself can carry a higher fidelity than what I was using. So I'm, yeah, I couldn't be any happier with the ray tube stuff. I mean, 100% was ridiculous. Yeah, it's cool because I got to meet Nelson earlier this year in Toronto. I was there for a conference. Well, I didn't know he met him in person. Yeah, no, we met in person. We had a coffee together. He took me to this really cool coffee shop that had these huge, I think they were JBL speakers and two bands that he had supplied the tubes for. He's good friends with the owner of that coffee shop and it sounded phenomenal. But he was saying that, you know, a lot of the tube, a lot of the tube manufacturers who are doing the new tubes, when the tubes are made in the factory, all of the tubes get sent to the purchaser and then the purchaser has to go through all of the tubes and match them and make sure that they're okay and any of the tubes that are not okay get thrown out. And so there's a lot of wastage in the whole process at the purchaser end. But what's What Nelson does is he actually has somebody in all of the manufacturing facilities that he uses, and I think he's using different facilities for pretty much each and every two, but they're just in one or another or whatever. But he has somebody there who's going through them as they're coming off the line and is testing them. And anything that doesn't meet their spec gets thrown out or doesn't get thrown out, it gets given back to the manufacturer and they then sell it on for industrial purposes or some other kind of like tube usage that so that basically what happens is every tube that ray gets is their spec and they know it's going to be a good tube so everything that comes through is good. So they do a lot of the heavy lifting. So when we talk about kind of the new old stock verse, the newly manufactured, they were made in different places, most likely sometimes even different countries. So I will say I've had a strong bird Carlson's, I've had features that had all their original telephone can tubes and they're an absolute pleasure to listen to. And when you start to get to the newer ones, exactly what Eric just said. So not only are you going to get, you will hear people talk about matching tubes. So you're most likely going to buy a matching set or a matching quad. You're going to want ones that have the same quality as close as possible and you will buy them. Yeah, tolerances. So it sounds like ray tubes is adding another layer onto that. Now what I've seen people do is tube roll where they literally just keep buying and listening and buying and buying and buying. That rabbit hole, I don't think a lot of us kind of forward to go down. Many more. Some people will, yes. Some people may have them literally lined up and say, I'm going to listen to jazz. So I'm going to go get these tubes. It sounds like ray tubes helps you not have a collection so big. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. So I think they do a lot of the heavy lifting. They do a lot of the discovery work. So if you're looking to not go down that path or to not buy thousands of dollars in tubes and get a set where they're pretty much sorted out or they're the best you're going to get, that's kind of the route to go to. Yeah. So different, I feel between, I know I made a lot of references to like instruments and production equipment in this episode. But you guys have a lot of experience with the high five stuff. So I think it balances itself out. But I don't really enjoy, I love my tubes. For some reason, like in the voice and music, I'll just use that example because the tubes are just right there. I've never found truthfully much enjoyment out of changing tubes out in that amp. Like if they work and they sit well and I'm not getting like fluttering or I'm not getting like kind of weird cross-talkie type of stuff, then I kind of just let it be because I believe that like part, there's like the tonal characteristics. And again, I'm talking about a vintage high five amplifier here. But sometimes there's just the tolerance that fits the amp. And maybe that's quote unquote not the highest fidelity tube. But man, if it settles and it just functions right and everything seems to be balanced, that is listening to a tube amp to me. Because it does change. I mean, you can put a JJ in two JJ 12-AX7s and then flop those out for two ray tubes. And you're going to absolutely hear a difference. But that's not something you wouldn't even need in my opinion. You wouldn't need to roll those tubes to know that. That's not the difference between a telephone can 12-AX7 and a ray tubes 12-AX7. That would be fun because there are like the highest caliber new old stock and the highest caliber readily available. That type of stuff I feel like would be an interesting tonal experiment. But like microphones and guitar amps, man, 12-AX7 can change the sound of a record. Like it's really stark when you get into those mono signal sources that are meant for recording and not for actively listening back in your stereo system. So even I guess if you're listening to music through a fully solid state system, you can still say you're listening to tubes. They're in there somewhere. Jeremy back in the green room too. I don't know when we're going to wrap, but this is fun. You were mentioning the line buffer stuff too. Integrating so say I don't want to buy a full on tube amp. Supply into my speakers because for whatever reason I don't want to. But I'm intrigued in hearing what a vacuum tube or a valve would do to my system. You have had experience with that experiment. Yeah, that's a good entry level to it. That's probably the absolute first tube item that I did by which is a tube buffer. I had that between a CD player and my Moran's 2245. It helped in two ways. Right off the bat I removed the tubes that came with it. They recommended a vintage pair of RCA's. So I followed that recommendation, put that in there. The only thing the small amp had was a line volume. So I put that in between the CD player and the receiver. I liked two things about it. I liked the way it kind of softened up the CD sound and I liked the ability to adjust the line volume as some CDs are a little bit louder than the other amp. And you can't adjust it. So that allowed me to kind of tone it down a little bit and allow me to hear the detail through the volume knob of the actual system. Yeah, that's cool. So I like doing that. And since then I've seen CD players that have those tubes built into it. So this is just a budget way to do it is buy one of these $40 buffers and then try it up. And even the new old stock RCA's I think those are only $25, $30 back at the time. You can still find new old stock decent tubes for good prices. Yes, yes. That's still available. Some of the newer build ones those have increased in prices when you're talking the KT-88s. Those are no longer nor really worthy of those are those are hard to come per say. I think that the line buffer thing is a really neat way to introduce I like the control that you mentioned and to introduce like what does this sound like. I think it checks the box of curiosity for a really reasonable entry price point. And it's cool. I mean, it can't because he doesn't need to be your CD player, but throw it into your streaming like in suit it does. Jeremy, I have a question. So do you you've got you've got tube integrated amps, you've got tube power amps, you've got tube receivers. Do you have any two preamps? I do. I have a dionical positive. And it sounds fantastic, but it's finicky. Each of the inputs sound slightly different. Okay. So I find myself using solid state preamps with a tube output for two reasons. Then you'll get the consistency out of it and you can also have and when I say modern, I think as far as I go modern is probably the 90s. Right. My modern. Most of my yeah, yeah. Most of my preamps are probably mid mid 70s and as anyone who looks at at my feed, the advent 300 model 300 as a preamp is probably one of my favorites. That mixed in with an ST70 is probably the quickest way to get vintage tube sound is a advent model 300 and a ST70 and in stock form or just semi restored form. That is a great start to just add a set of speakers. So yeah, yeah. Preamp wise, only one so far. I'm just curious because I've heard a few people who've said that, you know, if you have inefficient speakers, the way to go is a solid state power amp and a. That is correct. Yep. Just for the power. But it's funny that you and I both predominantly are using a two power amp and solid state. Preamp. I am a massive fan of efficient speakers. I am a massive fan of. Me too. Yeah. 9. or above efficient speakers because you can drive them off of, uh, Mitch, your voice of the theaters or your, oh, the, the clipshorns. Yeah. Yeah. Those, um, those can shake your walls at probably three to five watts. One watt, I drove them with the empty three. Right. I mean, rock the house. One watt and it was insane. Yeah. It's beautiful. I mean, it's, it's absolutely stunning sounding. Uh, it's really cool. And that's another thing to bring up too, is that like the tube sound is also dependent on what other, it's very heavily dependent on how cohesive your current system is. It's not like you add tubes and boom. You've got this, like religious experience. Uh, that's not really how it can go and speaker efficiency. I'm really happy that that was brought up because that's, that's when you kind of get to experience what the difference is. Um, the only to the outboard tube pre, um, that I have is a, it's only it's a phone opry. It's the project, uh, two box, uh, I've got two of those. And those are, I run them with, um, the, uh, SP 15, the techniques, uh, SP 15 table, um, and it's really cool. Um, it was a lot nicer. One I found tubes that were, uh, more pleasing to me. Um, and because I think out of the box, it was trying to, uh, like no fall, it sounded great. It sounded good out of the box. I, I want to hear specific things. I wanted, you know, I've, whatever I want my ears to, what's in my head to be manifested. And, uh, the tubes that it came with, um, it did feel like they were just, like kind of trying to please everybody. And I think that it hit the mark that it, I didn't be like, Oh man, I'm sending this thing back. Like it, it was cool. Uh, but it did leave some room for questions and for what ifs and, uh, that's a, a thing about vacuum tubes that I think is really important as well is like with a set with, I'm thinking about solid state amplification, um, class de amplification stuff like that. The curiosity stops, like right away because you can't, it's, I don't know what the, the wall is, but like seeing a circuit board with these IC chips and stuff in it, it's almost like, well, I mean, everybody knows I can't do anything to this. I can't change any of these parts myself. Like, you, there's, okay, I guess I can look at it, but that's where it ends. Um, and then you, you in walks the valve world that is still alive very much so like the record into the vinyl record industry or the cassette industry, the physical media tubes are so physical media. Exactly. Tubes want to be associated with physical media. Like they're the same, there's a reason they came up together. They're, they're siblings. Uh, and so, um, I don't know, I think if people are listening to this and you haven't messed with tubes and after listening to this, you still don't want to mess with tubes. I don't think you're going to want to mess with tubes in your lifetime. Uh, and that's, and that's Ruby. Um, but if, uh, you know, if you're listening to this and you have questions or you're, you're thinking, uh, about X, Y, or Z, yeah, leave a comment or hit up Instagram stuff or eCoostics, however it is, but, um, I'm just really excited that the three of us got to get together and talk about tubes for an hour, uh, in the middle of the week. Yeah. Yeah. It has been, it's been great. Um, oh, the other thing I want to mention before we get off with, with ray tubes that I find and I found and still find pretty, uh, special is that they have a one year warranty. And that's pretty crazy when it comes to this piece of glass, um, that gets hot in this passing signal, uh, nonstop, um, cause tubes do have issues and to be able to trust your process and your people and your model as a business to warranty those tubes for a full year. Um, I think is notable for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the only warranty I've ever heard on a tube. I've ever heard of one either. Actually, now you say that. I think you're right. So that, that would be for me too. Um, yeah. And they mentioned, you know, stuff about, uh, you know, being able to run these things up to 10,000 hours, um, with before they start to the grade and or the grade is it is not necessary. The right word before they start to like compress differently. I call that breaking in. There you go. See exactly, exactly. And hours of breaking. I'm on 25,000 hours of breaking on these bad boys. Maybe I'll just sell these on the use market for a premium. Um, but, but I wonder when they're going to start sounding good. Ah, but I do for real. I want to thank, uh, Nelson and Ray tubes for, uh, for sending these, these tubes to me, uh, to, to test out. Um, I've, for, uh, I did not pay for these the tubes for the, the, the Ray tubes. Uh, they were sent to me and I have run them through their paces in and out, uh, and I blow up a lot of stuff and I have not blown these up. Um, so I'm pretty, I'm pretty stoked on them. It's very, a very cool thing that they're doing. We'll have the link to, to them in this episode as well. So thanks Ray tubes for that. They have been in my main system for over a year. So they are the day that they're ever, and our ones are you running? KT 88. Bockelot baby. Here's some talk, talk through those things. That's what I want to hear. Oh yeah. Sounds good to me. Well, but here's some, I know, right? Oh, okay. Well, it's time to go. Some Jimmy, uh, Jimmy Cab on those early miles. You should, you should hear the Tron soundtrack. Seriously, nine is nails, Tron, Tron, Aries soundtrack through tubes is just insane. The playlist to this episode, man, talk, talk, Miles Davis and Tron. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, you're going to know if you like stuff after listening to those three tracks. Those three are through whatever. There you go. Yeah. That's a good tester. Um, thanks everybody for listening. Thank you, Jeremy at Budget Audio Filer, Eric at Audio Love YYC. I've been your host and producer, Mitch Anderson at Black Circle Radio. Um, like, subscribe comment. We'll see you next time. See you guys. Cheers. Bye. You've been listening to the Equestix Podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe and comment. The Equestix Podcast is produced by Mitch Anderson Black Circle Studios, originally music by The Hour of the Wall. Voice over provided by Todd a role of SSP Unlimited. As always, get up to the minute news and product reviews at www.equestix.com. Until next time, keep listening and stay high-five. The Equestix Podcast is brought to you in part by Black Circle Radio, all vinyl radio programming since 2009. For more information, please visit www.blackcircleradio.com.